In celebration of halloween (and due to the fact that I’m having a bad horror movie marathon this weekend) I’d like to open up a discussion on your favorite bad horror movies. I’m a big fan of the Evil Dead trilogy, personally- so bad that it’s become good. Sublime, even. The fact that Bruce Campbell could make a girl change her mind doesn’t hurt things.
So… your favorite bad horror movies. What makes them suck? What makes them MST3K material? Details!
We’re also trying to work on a bad movie drinking game. So far we have one drink for gratuitous nudity, whenever a character does something bloody stupid, and when a character is klutzy. Help is appreciated.
Nightbreed - Though I love Clive Barker and the film is brilliant in parts, it’s also quite cheesy in parts.
And do deliberately bad movies count? If so, I submit Peter Jackson’s Dead-Alive into the mix. A classic.
As for the drinking game… how about every time the villain speaks a catchphrase, drink! And every time a woman wrapped in a towel (or not) starts running a bath or a shower, drink!
Dead Alive is WONDERFUL!! If you love the Evil Dead movies, you’re going to cream yourself over Dead Alive. Bad Taste is an earlier work of his that’s absolutely horrible. Deals with aliens and the like…really bad, but enjoyable.
Night of the Creeps…silly claymation slugs that turn people into zombies before their head splits and more little sluggies come out. Great self-mocking movie, absolutely brilliant script and wonderful “crazed cop.”
Bio-Zombie Chinese movie. Main characters are Woodie Invincible and Crazy Bee…I mean, what more do you need to convince you?
Return of the Living Dead 1, 2, and 3. Silly, goofy zombie flicks. Some piss poor special effects and punks fighting zombies. Absolutely enjoyable. Only three words to say…“Send more cops.”
The Prehistoric Sound – a movie of many titles (I don’t think this one is even listed on the IMDB under this title). The premise is that the monster is invisible, so they don’t have to show it. The monster is supposed to be an invisible dinosaur. Some of the worst invisibility special effects you ever saw.
Tales from the Past – again, it’s not listed on the IMDB under this title. Really cheap horror anthology, narrated by John Carradine (!!!). It recycles clips from Roger Corman’s The Raven and others. It feels like a movie made by your friend’s big brother after he overdosed on Creepy and Eerie and decided that he could make a monster movie with “twist” endings just as good as they could.
Okay, for a good humor/horror movie, another Peter Jackson film, The Frighteners is a classic. Stars Michael J. Fox as a psychic who teams up with a pair of ghosts to swindle people, but soon becomes involved in trying to stop a dead killer from racking up more victims.
Re-Animator, Bride of Re-Animator, and Frankenhooker are other good undead movies.
One of the best vampire movies ever, there’s Near Dark. I know you’re looking for bad movies, but it’s got some stupid shit about vampires in it, and Bill Paxton, but aside from that, it’s actually one of the best vampire films out there. On the other hand, Modern Vampires is one of the biggest pieces of shit to ever be smeared on celluloid. Also, John Carpenter’s Vampires is a guilty pleasure of mine. Some friends and I rented the sequel last night, starting John Bon Jovy, but didn’t get around to it unfortunately. It looks promising though.
Oh, oh, how the fuck could I forget…CARNOSAUR!!!. Any of them, all of them, they’re absolutely horrible movies about dinosaurs in modern times. Dinosaurs vs. Small town cops; Dinosaurs vs. military men; Dinosaurs vs. bulldozers; ack, these movies are perfect for what you’re looking for!
I had a professor who used the term “busing.” This was any scene that shocked you, but wasn’t really scary. The term comes from the original Cat People when a girl is being chased through a park and all of the sudden theres this loud hissing sound that scares the crap out of you. It was a bus pulling up. Similar scenes are the previously mentioned cat-instead-of-monster false scare.
So, when we see anything like this, everyone groans “busing” and takes a big drink.
Also drink when:
>Someone trips (twice if it’s a girl)
>A stereotyped character is killed (slutty girl, token black guy, etc.)
>Someone walks backwards
>The killer is not realy dead
>Some foreshadowing statement is made
>The walls breath, bleed, speak, etc.
>A bucket of pig’s blood falls on someone (Carrie only)
Sounds like a fun evening. Try the Iron Chef drinking game next!
Oooh… I done found movie nirvana! I’ll agree heartily with alla these ('cept CalMeacham’s, which I may or may not have seen under other names) and recommend:
Brain Damage (with a cameo by Duane and Belial, from Basket Case) the story of a boy and his… something or other.
And the sequels to Basket Case, the third (I think) of which ends with the boys stitched back together, at a house full of fellow freaks (Cuh-lassick!)
From Beyond, a Lovecraftian head trip with Jeffrey Combs of Re-Animator “fame” as a brain eating pineal freak… the final shot of this one is actually a bit scary, or at least jarring.
Kolobos is a mish-mash of horror movie moments, tied up rather loosely into a fun (if non-sensical) package
Near Dark is too damn good for a bad horror-movie marathon. Though it does have lots of guns.
And how could I forget Basket Case, the video my friends rented for me (along with its sequel) for my bachelor party! What a grisly, twisted wonderfully-bad horror flick.
Skeezix – gotta love Brain Damage, which has one of my all-time favorite movie exchanges in it. The original owners of the monster track down the guy who has him now:
“What have you done with Aylmer?”
“Elmer? You fuckin’ named him ‘Elmer’!?”
“Not ‘Elmer’ – ‘Aylmer’! It means ‘Beautiful Thing’!”
The voice of the monster Aylmer, by the way, was provided by famed monster-movie host John Zacherle, alias Zackerley.
Chopping Mall, which I believe is also titled Kill Bots, starring a young Jason Priestly as the nerd in a group of teenagers that hide out in a mall and get hunted down by the killer security robots.
Troll is pretty bad, but my GOD, it’s hard to find a worse movie than Troll 2. It doesn’t even have any fucking Trolls in it.
And as long as we’re talking sequels that have nothing to do with the original story, Halloween 3 is a flying piece of shit.
Oh, oh, any of the Sorority House Massacre movies, especially the last one, which doesn’t even have a sorority house headline, it’s something stupid like Terror Tower or some shit, but it’s the same thing, only in a skyrise.
Sleepaway Camp is another one much along the same lines, as well as Evil Toons and Cheerleading Camp. Lots of breasts and no plot, the way it should be.
And although the originals of both series are pretty decent, any Pupper Master and Ghoulies movie will help bring on the pain. There’s also The Munchies, which is about creepy little statue that comes to life and everytime you cut the little bugger up, he splits into two. Maniac Cop and it’s sequels are pretty terrible as well.
I told you I’ve seen a lot of shitty movies. More to come later, I’m sure.
If you’re thinking seriously cheesy no-budget crap, look for Killjoy (the story of a bunch of teenagers in the 'hood being terrorized by an insane clown), An American Vampire Story (prominently featuring old Batman star Adam West as a rogue demon hunter), or Street Trash (probably one of the most utterly pointless Technicolor gorefests ever conceived of). Watch and be fiercely entertained, but don’t try to eat while you watch, as that way lies only madness and messy carpets.
If you are, however, looking for some quality material, you might want to consider graduating to stuff like David DeCoteau’s Sorority Babes in the Slime-Ball Bowl-O-Rama, the heartbreaking story of a few innocent frat boys who went a little too far. Or Dan Hoskins’s Chopper Chicks in Zombietown, a poignant portrait of the societal displacement and alienation felt by motorcycle-riding leather sluts the world over.
And if you want to go all-out and blow your own mind (since it is Halloween, after all), then I will suggest 1989’s sci-fi epic Alienator, featuring that hero of heroes, Jan-Michael Vincent, in a career-making performance. Sure, it’s sci-fi and not technically horror, but trust me… if you can get your hands on this one, your standards of what constitutes a film will be re-defined. Count on it.
Of course! Forgot about him. What a fascinating portrait of an actor in his independent stage, before the Hollywood machine got its claws in him. This, I’m sure, is Billy Bob the way he was meant to be seen, the way he would like us to see him. cough.
Last night I watched In the Mouth of Madness, a John Carpenter tribute to H.P. Lovecraft.
Well, apparently all the Lovecraft stories I didn’t read involve people being chased around with axes. It was almost completely unlike any Lovecraft I’ve ever seen. It really seemed like more of a tribute to Stephen King than anything else. There were a handful of Lovecraftian references in it, but nothing that couldn’t have been eliminated from the movie without problems.
There’s the intense overacting (What? is that Sam Neill doing all that theoretically cocky shouting?), the female lead that had me thinking, “That’s a MAN, baby!”, and the fact that none of it makes a damn bit of sense. It’s not unspeakable unknowable as in Lovecraft, it’s just poorly thought-out. A load of cack.
on AMC November 8 late Friday night- the AIP 1970 Roger Corman production of HP Lovecraft’s THE DUNWICH HORROR starring Dean Stockwell as Wilbur Whateley, Sam Jaffe as Grandpa Zebulon Whateley,
Ed Begley Sr as Professor Armitage of Miskatonic U, and Sandra Dee as the Pretty Young Thing.
also watch for a shot of Talia Coppola (nee Shire “Yo! Adrian!”) as a nurse or Dr’s secretary
it creeped me as a kid & still can under the right circumstances- also the animation during the opening title theme was pretty cool
